lunch | mark lee

learn to | 003

Johnny's pov

I walked into school that morning feeling great.

But then I saw her and that so called 'great' feeling drained out of my body.

Park Hyesu, an only child, that deserves more than what she gets. Being neglected all the time sucks I guess. It only made me feel more sorry for her.

"Hey yo," I smiled, taking a seat next to her.

"Um, hi," she replied hesitantly.

"You know me right?" I asked, looking ahead of me.

"Johnny Seo. The Johnny Seo."

"Girl I'm flattered at the fact that you know my name."

"Everyone knows your name," she answered back bluntly.

"I guess..." I trailed off, not knowing what to say.

Ice-cold silence wrapped around us. You could almost taste it at the tip of your tongue. I didn't want to get up and leave, because that'd seem rude, so I sat there, clueless as to what I should talk about. After a couple minutes that seemed years, she broke the silence with her barley inaudible voice.

"Why did you ask if I liked Mark the other day?" Her face was facing downwards, as if she was sacred to ask questions.

"I dunno. That boy was taking forever to dry his hair that night, so I decided to text someone. It was actually meant for Jiwoo but before I could delete anything, I had already sent the message so yeah," I answered truthfully.

"Oh, I see," she answered, a little hint of sadness dusting of her.

"You like Mark don't you?" I raised my voice a bit.

"N-no" she stutters.

"HA! Gotcha! You do like Mark! It's fine, there's nothing to worry about, it's a crush," I smiled.

"There's so many things that worry me Johnny! You have no rights causally coming up to me and telling me I have nothing to worry about. I don't want Mark to hate me like everyone else does. Jiwoo's the whole reason everyones hates me and I'll be honest, to this day, I still do not fully know why everyone's so against me. I never slept with her ex, in fact I didn't even know who she was at that time. I was slowly gaining popularity and improving my grades and she came along and ruined everything," she sighed heavily.

Tears started forming in her eyes. I patted her back and smiled again.

"Then learn to trust Mark. He's a sweet kid and doesn't really understand rumours, so he'll be a great person to open up to. You never know, you might be able to keep him for yourself as time goes on," I winked.

"Mark already told me he doesn't like me in that way," she replied, her heading hanging low again.

I crouched beside her. "My dear friend, if you don't learn to reach for the things you want, you'll never be satisfied. Even if you don't get what you want, you'll make new friends and form new memories. So give it a shot, just text him every now and then and say hi to him when you see him. You need to stop hiding yourself from the world."

"W-why are y-you helping me," she stuttered.

"Well, you see, there are two types of people. One does the killing and the other stores the dead corpses. Jiwoo does the killing, and in your case, spread false rumours, and you my wonderful, tiny friend, you store the corpses. You keep the dirty rumours locked up in your room, affecting the way you live," I paused. "It's time things changed. So learn to get over this and start a new chapter."

With that, I got up, and started walking away. That 'great' feeling returning to me, pumping energy into my body. I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart hope that things change. Jiwoo's been in control for too long.